


She Is

by breathtaken



Category: The Musketeers (2014)
Genre: Canon Era, Gen, Gender Dysphoria, Genderswap, Trans Character, Trans!Aramis, Trans!Athos, Trans!Musketeer(s), Trans!Porthos, Trans!d'Artagnan, Trope Subversion/Inversion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-22
Updated: 2014-12-22
Packaged: 2018-03-02 22:09:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,427
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2827793
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/breathtaken/pseuds/breathtaken
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>She's a good deceiver, more than good. Nearly a decade, and she's never given anyone cause to suspect. She wears her man's disguise right down to her skin: even her body keeps her secret so thoroughly that she knows nobody would believe her if she told them. </i>
</p><p>Four possibilities.</p>
            </blockquote>





	She Is

**Author's Note:**

> Subversion of [Genderswap](http://fanlore.org/wiki/Genderswap), in which it's actually the gender that's swapped. Set early in Series 1.
> 
> Content warnings: Gender dysphoria and body dysmorphia throughout; one instance of a desire for mutilation, and suicidal ideation. This may be a heavy read.

Aramis is deep undercover, the deepest there is, and nobody can ever know her secret. 

That's what she tells herself: that she's never wanted anything more than to be a soldier -  _she never will_  - and were anyone to learn the truth then she could say goodbye to her commission, her brothers, to everything of the life she knows.

She's a good deceiver, more than good. Nearly a decade, and she's never given anyone cause to suspect. She wears her man's disguise right down to her skin: even her body keeps her secret so thoroughly that she knows nobody would believe her if she told them.

She told a priest once, in a distant parish where nobody knew her, just to see what would happen. He told her that she was wrong, that her thoughts were confused and that she should pray to Saint Christina for guidance. 

She thanked him, and prayed to Saint Bridget instead.

Some nights, when the weight of her cover becomes a little too much to bear, she goes down to the docks, or to a certain street, and finds a man who can make her feel like the woman she knows herself to be; but even the relief of those moments is fleeting, dissolving on her tongue like sugar, leaving her hollow-bellied.

She's never felt pleasure without a thread of pain, and she's learned that one only heightens the other. It's what draws her into the salons of polite society, yearning for the company of her true sex, though she will always be an outsider there; and it draws her further inside to private chambers, where she makes exquisite music with her lovers' bodies and never dares confess that though she loves to love them she would still rather be their sister.

And it's alright - really, it is - that sometimes she cannot bear to feel their hands on her, never knowing; it's alright, even, that she will never bear a child. It's alright because she's still a fine soldier and the best shot in the regiment, and she comes up for breath in the swells of breasts under her hands and the secret gardens of treasures beneath her mouth, where she says with silent tongue:  _I have a secret too, will you keep it for me?_

 

* * *

 

Porthos is a survivor. All her life she's made do with whatever's within her grasp, and she supposes that this body is no different.

She has certain advantages, of course, that she wouldn't have in the body her stubborn heart insists on desiring. Even though she's broad where she should be slim and slim where she should be broad, even though she's too tall and there is flesh between her legs that doesn't belong there, she can't deny the way every bone and muscle responds to her, the raw strength at her fingertips that like a good daughter of the Court she has learned to bend fully to her will, however foreign it may feel. 

The years have been hard on her, and in the body she dreams of they would have been harder still. She should be thankful, really, that she's had to do no more than she has to survive.

And the days that's hardest to remember are the days she laugh the loudest. The days she drinks and gambles and plays pranks on her brothers, works on her masculine vices. The days she picks fights - with Red Guards, belligerent tavern guests, with anyone who looks at her wrong - and loses herself in exhilaration, in the strength flowing through her muscles until everything that doesn't fit is forgotten, however briefly.

She knows a name for what she is. She's heard it hissed and snarled in the dark corners of her childhood, and though she knows it's meant to wound, and to condemn, she keeps it close to her heart because it's all she has. If there's a name for her, however cruel, it means she's not alone; and she meets the eyes of every man she meets, ever-searching for one who's like her.

When she finds her, she's sure she'll know.

 

* * *

 

Athos is a drunk, and she thinks, better drunk than sober.

Drinking, she's discovered, serves several purposes. It both helps her to forget her past, and what she's done - and if she doesn't quite forget, she at least stops caring quite so much - and seems to soften her harsh edges somehow, dulls the nausea of a body that's always just off-balance, soothes the prickling of the hair that's never felt right upon her face.

It also prevents... other sensations, thoroughly unwelcome.

She remembers being held capture by a group of bandits early in her soldiering career, and when one of them threatened to 'cut it off' if she didn't stop running her mouth, thinking for a moment that she'd gladly agree if she thought herself likely to survive it.

In her darker moments, when even the part of her that obstinately clings to life falls silent, she wonders what might have happened if she'd agreed anyway.

But failing that as an option, the drink will get her through the nights; and day after day she becomes more and more a leader. A true son and heir, she thinks, though not without irony. Duty and leadership are woven to her core, run deeper in her even than her suffering; and until God sees fit to put her out of her misery, she will serve her King, and have no other master - or mistress.

They're everywhere, women. She can't be free of them. Some days she can hardly bear to look at them, and those are the days when she drinks the most of all. She drinks to dull the envy that's more beast than human. The memories. The betrayal.

Anne was the only person she's ever told; and she took her in her arms and shaved her hateful face till it was smooth, and told her that if she wished to be a wife, then Anne would be her husband.

Even the name she gave her hurts too much to think of, let alone everything she did for her, to ease her burden just a little.

How she called her sister, taught her to embroider, and a little harpsichord when she refused to sing. How she'd dismiss the servants for the evening and dress her in her own finery, and put her hair up as best she could. How they lay down together and just held each other for hours, something loose in her finally tethered by the comforting pressure of a corset, the weight of skirts, Anne’s arms around her.

And now -  _and now -_

No. She won't. She  _can't._

Far better to drink.

 

* * *

 

D'Artagnan vows she'll be a man if she must, if that's what it takes to win her the woman she loves.

Gone are her fanciful, girlish dreams of running away from her father's house and living as the woman she longed to be, no matter how dangerous, how unworkable. She thought of throwing herself on the mercy of a convent, perhaps, and offering herself to the Lord; though even then, the rest of her nature rebelled.

Try as she might, she couldn't imagine her life in the silence and the shade, eyes turned only to God. Despite her strange longings she has always been quick to anger and never shy to speak her mind, as unlike a woman as can be.

No, better to live in freedom as a man and a soldier than to live in fear as a woman, she knew that even then; and for Constance she would give up all she has, all she is, and more. 

She spends her restless nights in her narrow lodger's bed, dreaming up ways for Bonacieux to meet with an unfortunate 'accident', and hoping one day it'll be welcomed. That one day she'll be able to support a wife, that Constance might even love her; and in rare moments of doubt, though she knows Bonacieux to be a pompous arse and a neglectful husband, still wondering if she, the not-quite creature that she is, would be any better. 

Will it away as she might, she can't escape the fact that she looks at her beloved with as much envy as desire. 

But Constance is practical. She's not grand, she understands limitations; and if she would ever understand then she'd say it's true for everyone, that sometimes the things we want are just out of our reach.

So she'll play the hand she's dealt: yes, she will love, and she'll make do.


End file.
